"This is torture. It was very difficult to leave off so many of my favorites from this list but I decided to go with my favorites that don’t get as much attention as others so that hopefully it leads to people seeking them out. So these aren’t in order — love them all equally. Abel Ferrara’s masterpiece Bad Lieutenant. I love NYC films and this truly captured the city’s vibe of the early ’90s. I could watch Harvey Keitel screaming, crying and smoking crack all day. Besides his amazing performance and Ferrara’s vibrant realism, Zoë Lund wrote one of the tightest screenplays ever written. We only got one film from her as she tragically passed away in 1999. Thank you Zoë… this is an important film."

"When I was 15, I was in love. At 17, I told him I’d probably sleep with another man if given the chance. He left me in that moment, on the town green, after two years of non-stop passion. He moved to Prague. Seven weeks later, a blank brown packaged arrived with a book in it. No dedication. Another life-changer. Now that I’m married to a fantasy author, I’m not sure why this book isn’t filed in fantasy. I was tricked; I don’t read fantasy. But this book has a fantastical realism that pierces to the bottom of the psyche. I’ve re-read and re-read this sucker every five years since then, and I always read a different book"